new nursery items????

After searching online for the perfect rug for the new nursery I think I have finally found one. It's the item in the center of the collage. With the cow, duck, sheep and pig. I think the colors are perfect and it's not too girly or too boyish. I also found the cute boxes that I can use as storage along with a matching blanket and wall frames. So what do you think????

More party pics of Ally Harper

(Click on collage to enlarge)

Ally Harper's 2nd birthday

(click collage to enlarge)

We had a great turn out at Ally's party. Since I couldn't handle any more drama after the cake, it was a good thing the party went well. With about 40 people in attendance including 14 kids I never saw a tear shed, so I consider that a SUCCESS! Thanks to everyone who came and shared the day with Ally Harper. I think she had a great time. So was in turbo mode running from thing to thing at Jump Zone. Poor Chris, all I have to say is I'm glad I am pregnant so I didn't have to chase that wild child around for 2 hours!

One of my favorite moments of the party....

Some of the smaller kids had to have help reaching the top of the inflatables, so Chris and Jason Lowe were assisting. Jason was at the top of this particular one, and Chris would pass the kids up to him and then they would turn the corner and come down a slide on the back side and then finish the obstacle course on their own. Well you couldn't see the back side of the slide or anything, so I went around and held the camera up high to get a photo. Well, was I in for a surprise.

Here is Chris passing Ally up to Jason for her turn.

Here is what I could see from the back side. She was really high up there. And then it was time for the slide.... or so I thought.
I held the camera over the edge and snapped a picture. As you can see, it was virtually a vertical slide, a free fall for the little ones. I laughed so hard, because it didn't faze the kids. They continued to take their turns. I went to ask Chris did he know what was on the other side of the inflatable and he said "yeah a slide". I then had to inform him it was less a slide and more a drop off. It was sooo funny. Look at the blur of Ally Harper :) But needless to say, she had a great time.

Cake dilemma.....

Okay, so last year Brooklyn and I made Ally Harper's birthday cakes and really had a great time doing it, but since this year we would be in Destin for the entire week before the party I decided to have Walmart do the job for me. I thought about having Cakes and Candles or other bakeries but I wasn't sure what time Saturday evening we would be getting home, and I knew Walmart would leave the cake out for pick up at whatever time, so they got the job. I placed the order 2 weeks in advanced and asked for a 12:00 pickup Sunday (the party was at 1:30), but later decided to pick up Saturday night at 7 in case I needed a little more cushion time --in case something went wrong :( Well I guess I jinxed myself. Here were the instructions I gave the bakery. I ordered a full sheet cake with a green top and yellow trim, "HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY ALLY HARPER" written in all caps and in white frosting. This was suppose to resemble the Sesame Street street sign. Then I also asked that they put five 3" circles across the cake in the following colors: red, yellow, green, blue and turquiose. I was planning to use the circles as the faces of several characters by adding eyes, noses, mouths, etc. Well, Saturday evening came and Brooklyn & I rode back to town after a long trip home from Destin to pick up the cake. I go to the bakery counter and there is my cake waiting for me. I thought, now that's service, just like the Superslueths "any time any place, Walmart is on the case", then I looked at the cake .............


What the......??? Who is Harper???? And where are my WHITE letters? And did a 4 year old write this?
And have they ever heard of centering and spacing? And where is my turquoise circle?
I was in shock!!!! Now what??? I decided since Walmart is not as reliable as Darby, Pooh and Tigger and the bakery was closed already that Brooklyn and I would have to be on the case instead. So off to the cake aisle. We bought more icing to fixing some problems and to finish the character faces ourselves. As we were shopping, Brooklyn noticed another cake that came from the bakery that had been left on the cake aisle. It had Happy Birthday Tammy written on it, so I guess someone else was unsatisfied with their cake and just left it there and opted to make their own! Finally we went to find a manager to complain. I managed to get $10 knocked off the price, which to me was not enough considering the additional supplies I had to purchase to fix their mistakes and the time I would have to spend doing it, but I had to have a cake and I didn't have enough time to start from scratch nor did I feel like it. Did I say that we had just got home from vacation and I had a summer head cold :( So I paid the price and came home and got to work. I thought it may be an easy fix. I could just lift the writing off with a tooth pick and rewrite it myself. Well of course it couldn't be that easy. Since the top of the cake had been airbrushed green, when I lifted the lettering the green came off too, so I was left with just white frosting scattering across the thing. So I had to mix up some green frosting and try to blend it in. Well that didn't work out very well either, so Brooklyn and I stood over the cake for a while brainstorming. She even got a notepad and drew out a few designs. I finally decided to go ahead and finish the character faces, which I was satisfied with, and then moved on to the bigger problem. The huge green square in the center of the cake. Finally we decided to make a BIG Cookie Monster face. After mixing up turqouise frosting several times, we had a Cookie Monster complete with googly eyes and with Brooklyn's idea of crumbling up cookies in his mouth, he actually turned out really cute.

My last problem was I didn't have enough space to write Happy Birthday so I decided to just include an "A" and the number "2", since her day was being brought to you by the letter A and the number 2.

All in all I was pretty satisfied with the outcome, but I did have to stay up until midnight dealing with it. But in the long run, it tasted good, looked cute and the rest of the party went off without a hitch. So Happy Birthday Ally Harper, we love you VERY MUCH!!!

Eat More Chikin!!!

While at Northpark today, Chic-fil-a was having some sort of promotion and they had about 8 cows in center court dancing. Ally Harper decided after watching a couple of minutes that she would take part in the dancing. She was so funny. She thought the cows were there for only her to enjoy and when another kid would come up she would get right in front of them in order for the cow to dance with her. And when one of the cows would go take a break, she would go "corral it back to the herd". She had everyone cracking up.

A day in the park.

Believe it or not, it was like 83 degrees a couple of days ago, so we went to the park to play. While there it began to sprinkle but a little rain didn't scare us away. We stayed and played for a long while.

New nursery project

So tonight I decided to paint something to go above baby Christopher's bed. I used his bedding fabric as a pattern. Still debating whether or not to add his name across the top???? Now time to get one painted from Ally Harper's side of the room and then one for Brooklyn.